Comments on: Guardian 23988 / Paul – difficult

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Tramp — Thu, 01 Feb 2007 08:35:59 +0000

Is the ‘taken down’ not referring to the fact that when you buy a hot-dog you usually ‘take it down’ as the guy in the hot dog van is usually above you and hands it down to you (suggested to me by Nimrod last night)?

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rightback — Thu, 01 Feb 2007 00:15:43 +0000

I think this was a bit quicker than the average Paul for me (12’06″), with some agonising over the spelling of AMBIDEXT(E/O)R. I didn’t get any of the clues mentioned above until reading this blog, but I love ‘such pants’ for ‘hot dog’. The hyphenated ‘old-fashioned’ is a bit stretched even for the Guardian, but I completely agree with Mick’s comment about ‘never’ and ‘pointless’.

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petebiddlecombe — Wed, 31 Jan 2007 23:00:53 +0000

I guess “taken down smothered in ketchup and mustard” = “something taken down …”, with “taken down” interpreted as “being eaten”. Still a bit of a stretch, so I’ll change to “mostly my fault”.

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Mick Hodgkin — Wed, 31 Jan 2007 22:45:08 +0000

I was defeated by RISE AND SHINE, but it finally makes sense (thanks to Ilan). I rather like the fact that ‘never old’ means you take out ALL of the Os – too often you see ‘pointless’ inaccurately used to mean ‘delete an N while leaving an S and two Es’ or some such. But while I read ‘Such pants’ first as meaning ‘hot pants’, then as meaning ‘what a hot dog does’, neither justifies ‘taken down’ as far as I can see. And quite right about DISTRICT. Stricter editing required?

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Fletch — Wed, 31 Jan 2007 22:19:48 +0000

Have to agree re. 25, the surface was clearly irresistable.

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petebiddlecombe — Wed, 31 Jan 2007 22:19:23 +0000

Good work, Ilan. 24A is my fault entirely – spot the cat owner… 11D: Strict Ximeneans might quibble with the punctuation in “old-fashioned”, but for daily paper purposes I’m not too fussed. That said, the combination of O-deletions and “split fodder” (separated by ‘with’) makes this a very complex bit of construction, so I wonder how many solvers understood this clue.

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ilancaron — Wed, 31 Jan 2007 21:40:49 +0000

20, 24 are two well-constructed run-on clues:
20 is NOT A SAUSAGE clued by “nothing dissimilar to…” so it’s “nothing” and it’s “dissimilar” to 24 which is HOT DOG. I think that “such pants” is what happens when a DOG is HOT.

11D is a rather cleverly indicated anagram ([o]ne’s n[o]se? I d[o], hair)* where O removal is indicated by “never old”. Ximenean?